Bernie Sanders
Bernie SandersReuters

Vermont Senator and self-declared socialist Bernie Sanders surprised political observers in 2016, with a dark-horse candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination built on the explicit pledge of massive wealth and income redistribution.

Railing against the top 1% of income earners and the influence of “millionaires and billionaires” on the political system, Sanders, once considered a fringe candidate, managed to win more than 43% of the Democratic primary votes, netting 16 states and 39% of the Democratic National Convention’s delegates.

“We live in the wealthiest country in the history of the world,” Sanders said in a 2016 rally in Conway, New Hampshire. “How many people in America know that we live in the wealthiest country in the history of the world? Not all that many.”

“Almost all of the wealth and much of the income is going to the top one percent. Our job together is to change that reality.”

“There is something profoundly wrong when we have seen in recent years a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires.”

But according to a report Friday by VTDigger, Sanders himself has joined the top 1% of income earners in the US, with an annual income of more than $1 million last year.

According to disclosure documents filed this May, Sanders had a personal income $1.06 million in 2017, some 83% of it from the sales of his book, Our Revolution, in which he continues to target the incomes of the top one percent. Sanders also earned $174,000 as a United States Senator.

With a personal income of $1.06 million, Sanders easily passes the threshold for entry into the “top 1%” of 2017 earners, which last year was roughly $300,000 per capita.

In fact, Sanders’ income nearly places him in the top tenth of one percent. While Sanders’ actual income places him in the top 2 tenths of one percent of individual income earners last year, with just 3.8% more income, he would have made more than 99.9% of all individual incomes.

This is not the first year Sanders has qualified as a “one-percenter”.

In 2016, Sanders earned $1.04 million, again mostly from book sales and advances.

Speaking with VTDigger, Sanders political adviser Jeff Weaver brushed off suggestions Sanders’ big earnings undermined his rhetoric regarding income distribution.

“Bernie Sanders continues to fight for working class people across this country so I think it’s a pretty ridiculous question.”